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Reinvent the Story of What You Do

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I reckon we often default to a stereotype explanation of what we do for a living.

I’ve always found it tricky to explain what I do.  If I name a profession, it only tells part of the story.

In social and professional settings, you can watch eyes glaze over very quickly if you launch into a complex or dull explanation about what you do. Or else if you are ‘on song’ people can get really engaged and enthused.

When I was a journalist, people always believed they knew what that was. And for many, if they didn’t have a big hate going on for the paparazzi or the media in general, they would say, ‘wow that must be a really interesting life.’

But what is journalism? Is it a profession? Is it a craft? People know how to categorise roles like doctor or plumber, but a journalist is to most people some sort of a writer.

My point is we stereotype and categorise the jobs we do, and it creates separations, making teams and workplaces less efficient and communities more segregated.

I came across some really interesting ethnographic research into chefs and cooks and how they viewed their work. Researcher Gary Alan Fine was working on Occupational Rhetoric Theory, in other words the stories we tell ourselves and others about our work.

Fine found chefs could describe themselves as a professional, an artist, a businessman and a manual labourer. As in fact what they did was made up of all of these descriptions. As a professional they might use an analogy and say they prepare food like a surgeon, as an artist they produce creative results, as a businessman they are conscious of profitability, and as a labourer they have to complete some repetitive physical tasks.

Eric Stromberg used this research to look at why US online retail company Zappos has become incredibly successful through excellent customer service.

The Zappos training is so successful because employees learn to be a professional, to be creative and to do the hard yards of manual tasks so they understand the company as a whole, and support a powerful culture.

If we reinvent the stories we tell about what we do it can produce some remarkable results.

Story With Depth

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Stories are a dime a dozen today. Well that’s wrong for a start. You could say via google that stories by the million are free. Quite a difference. So how do we navigate all this content in a useful way? Are we conscious about the information we choose to consume? I think stories with depth stick longer. And they do so when people have  a strong and a powerful intention for telling them. We are much better at reading between the lines that we often think. And it is what is between the lines that tells of our intention, our values, what we care about and why we are telling a story.

This blog is going to be about the welling of stories and the way they are spoken.. The Story Well. And

This picture is of a well dressing in Cheshire. Its an ancient ritual to honour water and its source. These dressings are mde up of thousands of flower petals and seeds to make a mural about a current day theme.

When in doubt…tell a story!

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Sometimes an indirect or illogical or apparently irrelevant story can make a powerful point.

I was watching a rerun of an old TV show I used to love, Boston Legal, in my hotel room the other night. Alan, one of the main characters told a young lawyer struggling to win a case that when he gets stuck for how to close his case, he simply tells the jury a story, about anything, about something in his life. And so she took his advice.


My hotel room in Skopje Macedonia

She told the jury about how once as a teenager her pet chocolate Labrador had turned up in the kitchen with the neighbour’s pet dead rabbit in her mouth. Horrified, she had washed and cleaned the dead rabbit and placed it back in its cage at the neighbours home hoping they would think it died of natural causes. The next day her parents told her how the neighbours had come to visit, dreadfully upset that an apparent ‘nutcase’ had dug up their rabbit that had passed away from old age from a place where they had buried it in the woods. It had been cleaned up they said, and put back in its cage.

The lawyer was making her point in the defence of someone accused of theft where the logical answer was that the accused man was guilty, but she wanted to assert that perhaps the illogical version of events was true, and question whether there was reasonable doubt in the jury’s mind. She won the case.

She knew her why behind telling the story,  that was actually fictional and an urban legend, but she told it to show how the truth really can be stranger than fiction. And that our assumptions are not always correct.
It had me thinking as  I was travelling about the stories I would tell about my adventures. Sometimes this is confronting to me. I want to look good, have the most amazing adventures, face down danger, go where no man has gone before. But sometimes I simply want a holiday. I need to know the why in the stories I will tell to achieve an end for others. 

As it happened apart from the odd inevitable meltdown on the road travelling alone,  I had an awesome time ! And my stories are many and varied, unexpected, and at times adventures occurred where you would least expect them.

Finding Your Story Sweet Spot

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When people come to share a story they most often fall into two camps; those that say they have nothing to say, and others that have too much to say. We often don’t trust that there is a sweet spot in the story of our lives that has value for others.
What is THAT all about?
As Mark Twain once said, he never met a person who did not have a story to tell.
So the nothing to say, or can’t think of anything group need a couple of activating prompts.  They have to start with firstly believing that their experience and their self is worth sharing about for the benefit of others.
The prompt then needs to be an interactive conversation, either with oneself or with another.  There is no right place to start. Just get talking, get sharing, without concern about whether it is Good Enough, or whether it is As Good As Someone Else. Erase those thoughts.
And always remember, this is not all about you. It is about your audience and what they will get from your story. Be a bit vulnerable, have  a go.
The other camp is the too much to say, ‘burbling on’ group.  Again this comes from a lack of self belief or self worth. They are trying to convince you that their story is valuable.
In this case, slash and burn. Try halving the story and seeing if you can still have it make sense. Most often you can. We can over-tell a story very easily with overdoing the detail. 
An example is giving good directions of how to get somewhere. The best directions give key landmarks, and turns, not a description of every house on  a street, just the ones that stand out. Like, look out for the roundabout with a big oak tree on it, then turn right. Not, there are about 17 oak trees outside 23 houses, when you pass those, then turn right in exactly 29.5 metres. Well  a set of instructions like the latter is going to be a real mission.
The Checklist Manifesto is a brilliant book about how even those in highly technical and life and death situations need to use a sharply edited down set of instructions to succeed.


You’ll find the sweet spot of your story by road-testing it and sharing it with others and checking into what the little one liners are that people remember from what you tell them. It always boils down to just one or two sentences. Get hungry for finding out what they are, and be ready to have them be unexpected.

Story The Shapeshifter

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I’m travelling around England, a country saturated in story at every turn.
There are patterns to the stories as they go back so many many centuries, and the stories layer one over another with such a deep and long history.
The patterns create many juxtapositions.


And there are always so many versions, efforts to verify, to prove, to disprove.
It is a great pursuit, but you do wonder when people will arrive at the absolute truth about moments in history.
And meanwhile, generations create and recreate their own history.
The story of a place and of people can shift shape over time.
There will always be room for the people who focus on the detail, seeking accuracy and accounts of a story. And then there are those that are moved by the feel of a place, of people. For them, the accuracy of account is not critical.
As a story teller, I must work to serve all those ways of receiving story and information.
Studying film making I learnt that even the most abstract films had a clear structure, and interestingly Robert McKee, film script expert says fantasy is the genre that has the most precise story structure.
Otherwise if the story is not plausible people will switch off.
So the great craft of the story is to serve those that want the facts and figures, however they might be manipulated, and to serve those that want the more emotive and primal elements that affect the senses.
There will always be multiple storylines, but the reason for sharing them will always be the most important element.

Story Hiccups

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A story that is too slick is here today gone tomorrow.

A story that shows human flaws, the good and the bad of people and life, and their journey through it sticks. I had a stark reminder of this the other evening. I gave a presentation where I included outlining 5 key elements of a great story. Trouble was I only spoke about 4. One person noticed and came up to me at the end of the presentation. What was the 5th point, she asked.

 Mortified, I froze and couldn’t remember. I felt ridiculous, but emailed her the next day with the fifth point. It was: make sure there are twists and turns in a story, some surprise, some suspense. She and I saw the humour in the potential meaning that I had left the fifth point out as a test, surprise or element of suspense.

 Great stories have set ups and pay offs, they have great architecture. I wish I had designed my presentation that way. I always work to improve the architecture of my story.

I thought I had ruined the presentation, but the feedback has been great, so the flaws and my ‘being myself’ won out.

 The other funny aspect to this is that a story I share is about freezing on stage in front a huge school audience when I was a teenager. In little ways today, I can still freeze. I’ve told lots of friends and family about my messing up the fifth point in my presentation. They laugh and nod knowingly. Owning it and getting over it has become part of the story.

I have to admit fairly and squarely, I am not a numeric person particularly. Following a linear structure is not easy for me. When I speak, I go with the flow and weave together stories. But I will always work at structure, to serve those that need it.

Everyone’s Got a Story

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As a young journalist in the late 1970s if I was sent out on a story, coming back with nothing was unforgivable.  Newsrooms were tough environments in those days, and coming back empty handed from an assignment was a terrifying thought as editors would tear a strip off you.
I developed a powerful muscle to believe there was always a story to be found.
Mark Twain once wrote: “There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.”
Social media has taken us to a new crossroads. There are now compelling opportunities to share our own and other stories where and when we like.
We no longer have to rely on traditional media like the news, the movies and TV to be the sole creators and distributors of stories.
In life, and in business, we are now all story creators, it is not just the business of the marketing or PR department, or clever actors and writers.
But let’s be honest, storytelling comes easier to some than to others. However,  great stories and storytellers are now just about the gregarious, charismatic loud people. Often it is the quiet ones that have the most powerful stories to tell and then can come in a few stuttered words, and a few images a few actions that touch hearts and minds.
It is all about finding our natural storytelling mode. It might be holding up cards with text in front of a camera, it might be speaking, it might be mime, who knows.
The point is to start exploring your storytelling mode. We all have one.
Here are three key tips to get the ball rolling.
1.     Record your observations; with a pen, with a mic, or with a doodle. But stop, look, listen, and record, even if it is simply watching the traffic pass on a street.
2.     Explore your storytelling modes. If you are confronted by a blank page, use another medium, or ask someone to interview you.
3.     Share your story. Speak it out. To a friend, to someone online, to the dog, to the wall, but get it out.
 “ There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. “
Maya Angelo

The Pork Chop and the Digital Camera

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Decision making in our neocortex logic brain is hard work, and really, it doesn’t work.
I popped into a top end Queen St camera shop to find a camera to travel with. A guy working there, who obviously knew absolutely heaps about cameras took me through the bells and whistles of a range of brands and models. It all got complicated, and I couldn’t wait to get out of the shop and did not buy or want to buy a camera at all. Not a great piece of salesmanship. Two things were missing. He never asked me what I wanted the camera for in a way that told him what I was after. And he jammed my head with ‘too much information.’
A week later I am visiting Whangarei, a town in the north of New Zealand and a friend takes me to dinner at a favourite haunt.  Have the pork chop he says. No ifs or buts, he said it is amazing, order it.  And I did. The decision was quick and made on trust. And it was an awesome pork chop, with a great peppercorn sauce, garlic butter, a tasty gratin on the side. And the chop was huge.
So what happened there?  My decision was made in the limbic brain, a gut feeling, and a trust of my friend.
At the camera shop, there was no trust, I was stuck in my head, in the neo cortex.
Great stories hit you in the gut, in the limbic brain. You feel them, your instinct gets them. Data and information wallow in the neocortex, where overthinking occurs.

We can have the best of both world’s and that is when stories really land. A story with characters and drama, as well as facts and figures woven in land powerfully in hearts and minds.

Edit Like There is No Tomorrow

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A lot of our communication is underpinned by fear. We don’t want to get it wrong, have it turn out bad and be misunderstood. We are often scared about the consequences of bad communication.

A major symptom is long, rambling communication, trying to squeeze everything in, to convince people of our point. We take a scattergun approach, throwing a whole bunch of words at someone or some thing and hope it will land.

The word Edit comes from the same Latin root as education, edere, which means to bring forth. Wictionary has these wonderful sounding definitions of edere: 

  1. be thou brought forth; be thou ejected, be thou discharged”
  2. “be thou produced; be thou begotten”
  3. “be thou published, be thou spread abroad”

Michelangelo defined sculpture as the art of “taking away” not that of “adding on”.

When scripting drama, you learn to “kill your darlings”.

Courageous editing of our communication and thinking can be life changing.
Three tips for great editing:

  • like baking a great cake, let it rest a while before you cut it. 
  • always use a ‘second pair of eyes’ and have someone read what you write
  • check on your intention, ‘why’ you are telling your story – are you getting this message across? 

Ultimately, believe in your communication, and do not second guess the future, edit the ‘what if’ from your thinking.

      The Nature of Great Stories

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      There are two ways to tell simple compelling stories; the nature of people and the nature around us.

      We can get really stuck trying to tell a story we think people will listen to. Sometimes it is the fear of the blank page, for others the brain freezes, and for some it is an endless series of false starts that are never good enough.

      The minute we start to talk about a loved one, or our love of nature, we are engaged and engaging. We all have a relationship to nature, be it small or large, grand or tiny.

      A walk to the letterbox story can be as compelling as one about climbing Mt Everest. A story about your grandchild or your grandmother can be as compelling as a huge business success you have achieved.

      So here’s a story in the day in the life of myself and my grand daughter.

      Yesterday I had one of the busiest days at work this year. My nearly-three year old grand daughter came to work with me. Well we had white board strategic planning sessions, creativity brainstorms, exploring out in the field, many servings of ‘tea’ from the water cooler. I am not at all sure who learned the most, and in fact who was the teacher and who was the student.

      The number of activities and trail of devastation, or ‘creativity’ that a 3 year old can leave in their wake is astounding. And it wasn’t an 8-hour day, it was more like 4. If I padded it our, our activity for the day could fill a book. And there was humour, fear, laughter, tears, anger, frustration, excitement, surprise, boredom, hunger, and fatigue. We ran the gamete of just about every emotion and experience known to mankind. In four hours.

      We walked down to Basque Park, a steep hill from my office, past a couple of abandoned lots, littered with broken beer bottles and graffiti.

      “ Bloody mongrels,” mutters the three year old. We get to the park and a dead frond from a palm tree suddenly becomes an ‘alligator’s nose.” We are pretty sure he lives under the fountain and in the drains, but we don’t see him. Then it’s a piggyback ride up another steep hill to some more palm trees that have huge bunches of orange grape-like berries. I am now Warrior Grandpa and she is Warrior Princess. We are ready to take on the alligator at any moment if need be. The berries do look very edible, but we decide that they could be poisonous and have a game of catch with them instead. Then a woman with a three-month-old puppy called Baxter turns up. Granddaughter says she is getting a puppy and its name will be Rabbi and it will be black and white. There is a bit of a stand off with Baxter tho, a quiet observation of his exuberance. Back up the hill to the office, past the vacant lot, mumbles again about ‘bloody mongrels’ but we find some yellow daisies in the weeds, which we pick to take home for Mum.

      And in the office it is time for another white board session. There are sketches of a number of snails and snakes, the symbolism I am not entirely sure about, as well as a lot of ABCs, and many more ‘cups of tea’ from the water cooler. At one point during the white board session, somewhat exhausted, I nearly nod off. This is not good enough, but then we have a sleeping and snoring game, that morphs into hide and seek with eyes closed. Then it is time for a quick You Tube clip or two on the iPad set up beside my laptop. We check out Dora and Diego clips and a regular favourite, The Gingerbread Man.

      I have omitted to say that by this stage there are also sheets of flip chart paper carpeting the floor with more elaborate sketches in permanent marker, which I discreetly swap for water based. It is always the permanent marker that is the favourite, why is that?

      Time to go to the café for food. She orders cheesecake; Mum and I have fries, lasagna and a filo wrap. And of course the cheesecake arrives first. Half way through it the lasagna turns up so her plate becomes a mix of cheesecake and lasagna, interesting sweet and sour concoction.

      Anyway its time to go back to work. This time, ‘someone’ else is starting to get tired. A recce to retrieve peanuts that fall under the desk elicit a bumped head and a few tears. Time for another ‘cup of tea’ from the water cooler. And another whiteboard session in the board room. Now we have a wonderful mosaic right across the white board, that would do the hieroglyphics of Egyptian tombs proud.

      It is time to go. So I pack up the room, with some help here and there, but get into very big trouble when the now rather wilting daisies are retrieved from the rubbish tin. I get some Clingfilm, and wrap them to take home. Shoes, tights, and various other garments and bits and pieces are retrieved from the four corners of the office. The white board session is erased. This is fun. We didn’t keep a record, but we know what was important that we covered off.

       So it’s a drive to drop off grand daughter and Mum, car seat, bags etc. all off loaded, I get home and find a rather crushed wilted and sadly abandoned bunch of daises in the back of the car. Living in the moment? That’s an understatement.